Avoid Cynicism

We’ve become a society focused on negativity. From soap operas to pharmacy’s and other shops selling over-the-counter remedies for things we have or might potentially have, to the GPs dishing out tablets for anxiety because they simply don’t have the time to help cure the problem.

Embrace Negativity

Although I might sound negative, and I could have gone on and on about the way stress and pressure is emphasised in our society, there is a lot of positive in here because:

Negativity is our greatest teacher

Never ignore your negative voice, never ignore yourself or dismiss yourself as just moaning. Listen to every word you say, note how often you complain and what about, and realise that you won’t stop, the mind won’t stop sending out this message, until you listen to yourself and take action!

Look at your life

The first piece of constructive advice I’m going to offer, is instead of ignoring what bothers you and drifting through life, start taking notice.

Keep a daily journal and break it up into sections:

* What happened – was it good or bad?
* How often has this happened – is it a pattern?
* What can I learn from this?
* What action is required?

Once a week read back through your journal and make notes at the end of the week of what you’re seeing.

The best way to shoot this in the foot

Is to look at it with blame and/or self-condemnation or condemnation of others. For example, it’s not your bosses fault if you’re in the wrong career and don’t express the best of yourself at work, nor is it yours. Wrong person, wrong place, never works. Simple.

Ignore all thoughts of blame, who pushed you into this, all the things that went wrong that put you in this place, and focus only on using the ‘negative’ events and emotions (or greatest teachers) to work out a strategy to put things right.

Yes a strategy

When things are going wrong we often feel overwhelmed because we want them to go right at once! Preferably without much input from us.

Magic does happen in life if you are prepared to be that magic. You have to be the one to create the positive change you need to create to realise the dreams you had as a young person. To improve your life. To solve your problems. No one else can do it for you, people can help, but they can’t force you to change you have to do it.

God gave us free will and no human can override that!

That may of course sound a bit churchy, but even if you took God out of it and focused only on the human condition, would you really like to feel that your free will had been taken away and that you were a puppet or programmed robot, only capable of taking action if someone else tells you what to do, or changes your programme.

Of course you wouldn’t so alongside negativity embrace your free will and the power that will bring into your life.

More tomorrow…

Smiles

Deb